Jedi
by Kazzy
Summary: Luke on Anakin. Vignettes. Canon.
1. Pictured Here

Title – Jedi  
Author – Kazzy    
Rating – G

Timeframe – Anytime from Luke's childhood on.  
Category – Vignette  
Keywords – Angst, I guess. Is there a category for musings?  
Series – None, yet.

**Summary – **Luke wonders about his father both before and after Vader reveals himself in ESB. 

**Disclaimer – **Don't own it. Any of it.

**Notes – **Well, when kayladie was over in one of my other fics, _Senator – Leia vignettes_, she asked me to write Luke vignettes. I tried and then one Thursday I was happily sitting in a Shakespeare lecture and this Evil Plot Bunny crept up and bit my ankle. Causing me to wander off to the library straight after class and write this.

~~Pictured Here~~ 

Before he was twelve he'd never seen a picture of his parents. Either of them. Anytime he tried to ask he was rebuffed. "They're dead, leave them that way."

His father had been a navigator on a spice freighter and was killed in a raid by space pirates, months before Luke's birth. His mother, grief-stricken, had died giving birth to him. Often he wondered if she didn't love him enough to keep living, but Aunt Beru said his mother had loved him more than anything, things just went badly for her. "But you were a gift to us, Luke, and I am grateful for it."

Uncle Owen seemed to forget Luke was a gift because he was always yelling at Luke who could never seem to do anything right, no matter how hard he tried. Uncle Owen always managed to find something wrong with Luke.

Looking back, Luke supposed the older man had been afraid. Aunt Beru might have been thrilled at Luke's presence, but she could afford to be. Uncle Owen felt he had to be watchful. His brother's son was dangerous.

Anakin Skywalker had been killed, not by pirates, but by a Sith. Luke could be a Jedi and Jedi could be killed. So it wasn't that Luke could never do anything right, he could never _be_ right. The Force was something you were born with, not something you acquired. And having the Force meant you were marked for death or slavery.

Only Luke had to wonder, why had Owen Lars taken him in? He was responsible for Luke, that was certain. But had he felt the responsibility out of love, or duty? Anakin Skywalker had always been labelled a "damn fool who not only broke his mother's heart, but his wife's as well" to Owen Lars. What were his motives in taking in his wayward brother's child?

Once upon a time, before he found the holo, Luke had had a sister. Not a real one, even though she seemed that way at the time, but one who had helped him to do his chores and make mischief, nonetheless. The sister that would have been his, he knew, if his parents had still been alive. She was calmer than Luke, but knew better tricks, too; only she was never around when he was caught. She had been beautiful like their mother.

Luke knew that because Aunt Beru had told him once, to make him go to sleep. "She had long hair and the prettiest face. Your father fell in love with her the moment he saw her. She was the most beautiful woman he'd ever seen." "Even prettier than you, Aunt Beru?" She'd smiled at him and kissed him goodnight without an answer.

She hadn't smiled when Luke had told her about his sister. Actually, he hadn't meant to tell her, it had just slipped out when she'd questioned him about where he'd disappeared to when he was never meant to go anywhere alone. He'd protested that he hadn't been alone, and when Aunt Beru had asked further, he'd _had_ to tell her the truth.

Her skin had gone white underneath her tan and she'd asked him about his sister. When he did, she told him he must never tell anyone, ever, especially not to tell Uncle Owen. "He wouldn't like it," she said. Well, Luke knew _that_, Uncle Owen didn't like any of Luke's stories – "Useless dreams, like your father's!" – so Luke didn't bother to tell him any. Then she'd sent him to help his Uncle on the north vaporators and disappeared for the afternoon. Luke never mentioned his sister again and eventually she'd disappeared like everyone else in his family.

When he was twelve he'd found the holo. A spoon had dropped behind the cooking unit and his aunt had managed to pull it far enough away from the wall so Luke – small and skinny for his age – could crawl in behind. He'd grabbed the spoon and noticed something else lying there and grabbed that too.

Maybe it was a treasure map and he could find a treasure and they could use it to move away from Tatooine and go and live on Coruscant or somewhere exciting. Back then he hadn't know that even if it had led to untold riches there was no way they could go and live on Coruscant.

In the light he could see it was only a holo. A picture of a boy a little younger than him. At first he thought it might actually be him – a small boy with blond hair and blue eyes, smiling cheekily at someone outside the picture. Quickly, though, he could tell the picture wasn't him. If he'd ever worn clothes like that his aunt would have had a fit. Besides the quality of the picture showed it couldn't have been taken in Luke's lifetime. Then, as he'd looked closer, he could see the boy didn't look quite like him – his face was a bit wrong and he stuck his chin out in a way that Luke did not.

Aunt Beru, who had been fussing over getting the cooking unit in place, finally noticed Luke was holding something and asked him about it. He showed her and she frowned. "I thought this was gone," she said softly. When he had asked who it was she told him distractedly it was his father. In his excitement he never noticed her reluctance to hand it back, or the way she'd watched him uncertainly. He spent all afternoon staring at it, imagining what his father was like as a boy and if he were like Luke.

Uncle Owen had come home to dinner late that night and when he'd found out about the holo, he'd taken it from Luke and sent the boy to bed early. The next day, when Luke had asked about the picture, his aunt had looked at him sadly. "No dear, it got dropped and cracked last night. You could barely see anything, so I threw it away."

She wouldn't have thought of keeping it, even if it had been safe to keep a damaged picture of a Jedi Knight. Beru Lars was from Tatooine and few who lived on the desert planet could afford sentimentality. A similarity Luke did not share with them, but instead took after his father – the crazy dreamer who had loved to fly and who had fallen in love with the most beautiful woman in the galaxy.

Luke didn't have much to connect him to his father, apart from Uncle Owen's frustrated words that he drove him to distraction with his head in the stars, just like Anakin. So Luke was glad he'd had the chance to spend that one afternoon staring at the holo, trying to memorise it, rather than chasing womprats with Biggs Darklighter.

For weeks he traced every memory of that picture until it became blurred and hard to see, like a holo with too many fingerprints. He had mentally viewed it from every angle, every plane, poked and prodded, trying to draw out everything he could about his father. Then he lined it up against every action, every thought, of his own to see how much the same they were. 

Eventually they seemed to merge into the same person, and although Luke could no longer remember the exact angle his father had held his chin, or exactly how messy his hair was he felt like he had part of him to carry around. Now Luke was taking another step to becoming like his father, and it couldn't help but make him fell an even stronger connection between them.   

*****

**Notes:** How did I go? I wondered if the ending was a little weak. Your honest opinion is highly appreciated.

Please review 


	2. Them All

Notes: I guess this is set on Hoth sometime before ESB Them All 

_I want to be the first one then, the first to see them all. –Anakin Skywalker_

Stars. There were a lot of them. From space they were cool and distant, a pin-prick of light in an inky sky. From where he sat, they were tiny lights, pretty, but not worth much.

He knew, however, that it was an illusion. Some of those stars were dead, and had died a long, long time ago. Others were too hot – hotter than Tatooine – to support life. Some were too cold, unable to support life even to the standard of the frozen Hoth.

Many – thousands upon thousands – could support life, though. These had populations that ranged from a ragged settler bands, to sprawling metropolis. On them lived beings of every shape, form and colour.

Each of those beings had a different set of beliefs, different abilities, interests, loves, hates and emotions. All of them lived their lives differently, with different results. All of them had some reason for existing – even if they weren't sure of that reason themselves.

The Empire threatened that. Maybe it wasn't noticeable to many of those beings out there, but it did. Some beings realised this. Others resented this. A few revelled in it, taking pleasure in the pain of others. Then there was the Rebellion – the ones who fought back. The ones who lived and died to give the galaxy a chance. A chance that Palpatine and Vader would deny them otherwise.

Luke wondered if his father had known this before he died. Had he wished he could prevent the coming choking sensation that would grip the galaxy as its life was sucked out through its own lungs? Was it over this that he and Darth Vader had fought?

He wished he could know. But there was no one left to ask. His aunt and uncle, impossibly tight-lipped over his parents, had been denied the right – the responsibility – to tell him the truth. Obi-Wan had been killed by the man – monster? – he had created; the same evil who had killed Luke's father – and the fathers of other children. Their mothers, too. Cousins. Brothers. Sisters. All stolen.

There were other things he wanted to know about his father. One or two of the people here had fought in the Clone Wars. He'd been lucky enough for them to tell him of his father – a well-known fighter pilot, famous for his skills in the cockpit and his bravery in the Wars. And about Obi-Wan: a brilliant General and a dedicated Jedi. Both had been heroes.

Sure, that was wonderful. Certainly, it was better than a simple navigator. Yet even these tidbits weren't enough for a child who was hungry for knowledge on a man who was barely more than a myth to him. A father whose image, blurred as it was with Luke's own, was just a hazy image of a dusty nine-year-old boy. Faded by the passage of time and the instability of memory. 

Had Luke's father sat and stared at the stars the way Luke did? He would like to believe so. Uncle Owen had always called him a dreamer with bitterness lacing his tone. Luke had never understood why it was so dangerous to be a dreamer, to want to travel in the stars, to be a hero. Surely, that couldn't be wrong.

The Jedi had travelled from system to system, helping people, fighting in great wars (not unlike the Rebellion?), and saving lives. If there were beings who needed help then the Jedi had helped them. Had Luke's father ever looked up at the stars and thought about the sheer magnitude of what the Jedi had to do? Had he ever thought about all the beings, on all the planets, in all the systems that circled the stars which supported life, and about how many of them needed his help?

Of all those planets, with their billions of beings scattered from one end of the galaxy to the other, how many had his father seen? How many had he helped?

*****

**Notes: **Does anyone know the plural for metropolis?

I'm going to start a system where I post updates on my WIP in my profile, so look out for that. 

Please review.


	3. At Last

There was going to be another one before this one, but it ended up falling chronologically later, so I'll post it when I get a chance to type it up. Anyway, this is a given. You can't have a series of vignettes where Luke thinks about his father without one of these. :-D****

****At Last****

Knowing brought a certain realisation. It acknowledged something he hadn't noticed, but had sensed nonetheless.

Somewhere along the way, something hadn't quite added up. Oh sure, it all made perfect sense, until you thought about it, until you _knew_. Then the great gaping holes of your childhood suddenly reopened and you realised _why_.

Finding out about his heritage as a Jedi, about his father's past, had done that. It had revealed all those moments, long buried, when something happened that he couldn't explain. Finding something that had been lost, knowing things he couldn't possibly have been told, objects abruptly changing position when no one was looking.

Incidents like that had made Aunt Beru turn white, and her hands shake. She stopped smiling, and her voice wobbled when she spoke. They had turned usually gruff Uncle Owen into a man whose temper was short and sharp, harsh.

Luke, the child, didn't connect these reactions overly much with his own actions, or rather non-actions. How could his guardians' moods be affected by something that was so uninteresting, so unworthy of attention, something that just was? It's hard to understand you're different when the only mould you have for normalcy is yourself. 

Even after he started school and saw how truly unusual his life was, he couldn't see the link between the odd events and why his uncle worked him harder than any of his friends were by their own parents. Or why even when all his chores were done and Aunt Beru didn't need his help he couldn't go and play with others.

Obi-Wan's stories about the Jedi and Luke's father had struck a cord. Little Luke Skywalker, Wormie, that strange kid from the Lars homestead, was now the son of a great Jedi Knight; the son of a man who had fought in the Clone Wars and had been hero. Luke had inherited a gift – a curse – from his father that the Emperor and his grim shadow, Darth Vader, would kill him for. He had the Force. It flowed through his veins, a little like blood, but more illusive and far more potent.

Uncle Owen's over-protectiveness and Aunt Beru's occasional fearfulness were connected to this. They must have looked over their shoulders every day that Luke spent in their care. Each morning they must have woken knowing that today could be the day when soldiers, white armour gleaming in the hot sun, would come and take their nephew from him.

How much of their lives had been terror and how much could Luke have prevented simply by living somewhere else? It was not a decision that was his to make, and his inability to change the eventual outcome of it chaffed. In some ways, it would have been easier if the choice had been his. Guilt could then be clearly defined, and not taken by default. 

Luke could remember times when, at a very small age, he'd been good, when he'd behaved himself. Uncle Owen, his mood much improved, had allowed his nephew to sit quietly and watch him tinker with this vaporator, or that droid; explaining to Luke a knowledge that even instinct couldn't bring. In those times there had been no trace of anger, or resentment, or fear, or even bitterness. 

Was Luke placing something on those moments that had not been there? Or had Uncle Owen truly felt affection for the small boy who had cluttered his workshop, filled the air with chatter, and brought fear to his life? He had to wonder how much of Owen Lars' life had been warped by the presence of his stepbrother's child and the danger he brought with his every breath.   

Aunt Beru had said on many occasions that she liked to have Luke around the house, where she could hear him, see him, call to him if she needed help. Now he thought that perhaps it was her way of keeping him safe, as though if he were out of earshot he might never be returned to her.

Permission had to be granted for everything. As he grew older, he found it harder and harder to have to ask to do anything, and yet the fights that not asking caused were terrible. His other friends thought nothing of going to Toshe station to spend the time together. Yet for Luke, even leaving the house was an effort.

His teen years had become increasingly tense. He felt stifled, as if he couldn't move without doing something wrong. Dinner was like flying through an astroid field: he knew what he was saying was going to get him in trouble, but he also knew that he couldn't quite swerve out of the way fast enough.

Luke just didn't understand why it had to be that hard to leave the farm, and Owen and Beru had been unwilling to explain it to him. Knowledge brings a certain freedom, but danger has always dogged the steps of the free. It would seem that awareness of the world leaves you open to attack from it, like the prey that only becomes visible when it is aware of the predator. Understanding has a way of bringing to life that which has never existed before. To know of his past might have made Luke a walking target. It was unstable reasoning at best, certainly, but truthful? Maybe.

Obi-Wan's story about Anakin-the-Jedi had made a whole lot more sense than anything else Luke had been told until then. So much sense in fact, that Luke never noticed the other little niggling bits.

Vader's relentless pursuit of him, for instance. After slaughtering an entire order of Jedi, you'd think one barely trained farm kid from Tatooine would be easy. Why hadn't Vader struck him down with a single blow?

He'd always considered it luck before now, or some skill on his part. Maybe his escapes had contained some minor elements of both, but that hadn't been why, not really. It's a lot harder to capture someone than it is to kill them. And that's what Vader had been aiming for: the capture of Luke.

Perhaps on some level he'd been aware that Vader and Palpatine wanted to capture him. Possibly known it was because he had a Jedi for a father, and could be one himself. But he hadn't made the connection. Maybe he hadn't wanted to. Not that there had been anyone to confirm his suspicious had any arisen. Which they hadn't. Luke Skywalker had never once assumed the relationship between him and Vader was deeper than the one he'd been told of.

And why should he? Why should he have assumed anything of the sort? There was nothing to connect Luke with Vader other than the fact that the Sith had killed his father. Obi-Wan and even Owen and Beru had made very sure of that. Luke Skywalker must never know the truth about Vader and his father.

Still, he wished he'd known. He wished someone could have told him before he raced off to face Vader on Bespin. It would have been nice when clung to that ledge, in agony and beaten so thoroughly he wondered how he could have thought it could have gone otherwise, to have had an inkling of what would be tossed at him: the last blow struck by an already victorious opponent. _No, I am your father._

If anger had been an outlet, he would have used it. How could have any of them stared him in the face and told him about his father, the navigator, or the war hero? Even Anakin-the-Reckless hadn't been like this. At least that Anakin had had something worth emulating. Yet they had all sat there and told him that he was not the son of one of the most evil beings in the galaxy.

_A Jedi knows no anger._ He couldn't use fury against anyone; he couldn't stamp his feet in childish temper; or refuse to speak to any of them. Not least of all because he knew he was above that. Those displays had been left on Tatooine and they could stay there. Besides, there was no physical target. Yoda had refused to discuss Luke's father with him, muttering about the 'here and now' and focus. The ancient Jedi had turned away giving no clue, but leaving little in the way of actual lie. Everyone else he could have blamed was dead.

So he was left to sit alone and contemplate what had been said and why.

******

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